GODZILLA!!!!!!!!!

Just a couple minor suggestions for the morning 1A meeting at the Star:

1) If you have to burn a third of your summary deck ("The party with an elephant for a mascot") just to explain the illustration, you have the wrong illustration.

2) He might have stepped right over the skyline, but -- keep your voice down and move slowly toward the exits -- it looks like at least some of your fair city is about to take a pretty serious stomping.

Really. That's a lot of time and space invested in what amounts to an undigestible word-n-image hash. The elephant and donkey aren't the universally recognized icons you think they are, and a Godzilla hit on some office buildings isn't exactly an intuitive way to explain why you didn't make the top two list of places to hold a convention in midsummer. Next time an idea like this starts to take on a life of its own, drop a dictionary on it. 

TSA: The early years

Can't you just see the pioneering forecasters now? Firing up the kerosene-powered IIc and laboriously recording snowfall totals on 12" wax floppy discs? Thanks to their hard work, we can look back today and say the snowiest winter on record at Metro Airport was (drum roll please): 1880-1881.

While you're at it, please bear in mind that "Let it snow" is on the permanently banned list. How "average" did last winter have to be to qualify as "very average"? And speaking of average, who was gazing out the window when this monster went clanking by?

By Monday, fore­casters said, the area will average about 5 inches of snow, lots of wind and some areas with up to 10 inches of snow.

Get it?

In case your newspaper hasn't hired an interpreter for the metaphor-impaired out there, imagine the conversation downtown: Hey, could you do, like, a Tundra? And it'd be, like, on the tip? Of an iceberg!

OK, as metaphors go, it's a little on the mixed side. We don't have an actual iceberg of Toyotas, let alone Toyota troubles; we have an iceberg of ice, with a Tundra on top. Not an unusual pose for your Final Four ad campaign, but just fractionally out of tune (something can be "on the tip" of your tongue, but it's "the tip of the iceberg"). And, of course, subtle as the day is long. Get it? Tip of the iceberg, Ma!

Lest you be tempted to write this one off to Those Wacky Kids and their Photoshops, bear in mind that America's Newspapers have a long tradition of throwing visual elbows on the front page when there's a point at stake. Here's Carey Orr* of the Chicago Tribune, with a mild form of the FDR- bashing that decorated the Trib's pages right up until the presses rolled for the bulldog edition of December 8.* If it reminds you of any number of recurring themes at the Fair-n-Balanced Network, like the "apology tour" and the "who's your buddy?" riff, there's probably a reason for that.

* Orr, who has been featured in these pages a couple times before, was among several Pulitzer-winners in the Trib stable. He's not the only one who drew FDR standing, or walking, or doing backflips, but based on the sample that this project drew on (November 1941 through mid-January 1942), he was the most likely to.
** I was trying to find a really good one from the Trib's near-indictment in 1942, but some boxes in the basement have yet to yield all their secrets, and it's probably in one of them.